Rescue Mode - eARC Read Online Free PDF

Ted Connover stepped in, took a swift look around, then walked jauntily toward them. He looks unhappy , Benson thought. But at least he came.
    “The gang’s all here,” Connover said as he approched the rest of them, pulled out a chair and swung it around backwards. Then he squatted on it, resting his forearms on the chair’s back.
    “The gang is all here,” Benson echoed, gratefully.
    Still standing while all the others were seated, he began, “I know this is a kind of strange place to have a meeting—”
    “We can shoot some pool afterward,” chimed McPherson.
    “Put time to good use,” Prokhorov suggested. “Study Newton’s laws of motion.”
    Gonzalez giggled, “A body in motion stays in motion . . .”
    “Until acted upon by an outside force,” said Amanda Lynn. “Basic physics.”
    “Physics isn’t the subject of this meeting,” Benson said. He tried to make it light, he didn’t want to sound like a taskmaster.
    “Then what is?” Connover challenged.
    Benson hesitated a moment. Then, “This is going to sound corny, I know, but I thought we ought to get together without anyone looking over our shoulders—”
    “Except for them,” said Catherine Clermont, pointing a lacquered fingernail at the barflies.
    “They’re not paying any attention to us,” Benson said. But he lowered his voice a notch to say it.
    “They could be spies,” Prokhorov muttered. “Secret agents.”
    “Look,” said Benson, trying to regain control, “I wanted to have this chance for us to be together so we could talk freely.”
    “About what?” asked McPherson.
    Benson had rehearsed his little speech to himself a dozen times. But now it all seemed so trite, so tacky.
    “Look,” he started again. “We’re going to be living cheek by jowl for the next two years. If any of you have developed any problems with the other, now’s the time to bring it out into the open.”
    There. It was said. Benson looked at the seven of them, arrayed along the double table. Some frowns, some blank looks. No one was smiling.
    “Well,” said Clermont, “I for one am looking forward to the mission. We have all trained for more than two years, non ? I think we know each other well enough to make the voyage to Mars and back quite well.”
    Taki Nomura said, “I’m always available for psychological counseling.” Grinning, she added, “You know, talk to your friendly neighborhood shrink whenever your homicidal instincts start to bother you.”
    A couple of chuckles.
    Amanda Lynn almost glowered at Benson. “This isn’t about sex, is it?”
    “You tell me, Amanda.”
    Her dark face looking almost troubled, Amanda said, “Well, like you say, we’re gonna be locked together for a lotta months. Four men and four women.”
    “Like Noah’s Ark,” said Gonzalez.
    “We are all adults,” Clermont pointed out.
    “That’s the problem,” said McPherson, his bearded face dead serious.
    Amanda looked as if she wanted to make a comment, but she had second thoughts and kept her mouth shut.
    Nomura said, “As ship’s doctor and psychologist, I’ll have a supply of pharmaceuticals to dampen the sex drive, if any of you feel you can’t control yourselves.”
    “Modern medicine at its best,” McPherson mock-growled.
    “This is a serious matter,” said Clermont. “We have all been screened psychologically, have we not? We are all responsible persons, not teenaged maniacs.”
    “I hope so,” Amanda Lynn said, with a sigh.
    Ted Connover piped up. “Hey, I’ve got a loving wife waiting for me. I’m not going to screw around.”
    “I am married also,” said Prokhorov. “But two years . . . that is a long time.”
    Benson thought of his own wife, who had not bothered to move to Houston with him. They had been separated for more than two years now, ever since he’d started training for the mission.
    Pushing such unhappy thoughts from his mind, he told his teammates, “We all know how to behave ourselves. At least, I think we